Various forms of warning and control systems and methods have been developed over the years for use and/or control in numerous environments. One area of particular concern which has received attention for a long period of time but without the adoption of any appropriate implementation or solution is a warning with regard to approaching emergency vehicles, such as fire engines, police cars, paramedic and ambulances, and the like. Minutes, even seconds, added to the response time of an emergency vehicle can drastically affect the degree of success of the mission of the vehicle, whether it be assisting accident, heart-attack and stroke victims, firefighting, responding to violent police situations, and so on. The critical response time of such vehicles is severely hampered by one particular major factor; that is the unaware and therefore unresponsive vehicular traffic encountered during the mission between the point of origin and the destination. The drivers of today are more and more audibly isolated and distracted from the outside world with their audio systems and cell phones, not to mention the isolation and distraction caused by them in the ever increasing soundproof vehicles. Unfortunately many drivers simply do not hear the sirens or see the flashing lights of approaching emergency vehicles. Blind intersections, heavy traffic, hearing impaired drivers, and listening to music via head phones or onboard audio systems all contribute to the problem. These drivers and others impair the response in an emergency situation, and even further complicate the problem by not yielding the right of way, making life threatening turns or taking other actions which can dramatically slow or even stop the progress of the emergency vehicle.
Numerous patents have been issued on systems which address some of the foregoing problems. Several examples are U.S. Pat. No. 5,307,060, U.S. Pat. No. 4,403,208, U.S. Pat. No. 4,794,394, U.S. Pat. No. 4,238,778, U.S. Pat. No. 3,997,868, U.S. Pat. No. 6,011,492, U.S. Pat. No. 3,784,970, U.S. Pat. No. 5,808,560, U.S. Pat. No. 6,087,961, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,222,461, and 6,292,747. Although these patents disclose various proposals for warning about the approach of an emergency vehicle, and even some provide control over the range of transmission involved, there is still a basic problem which exists with such systems because of the fact that they broadcast warnings not only to those in the relevant vicinity, but also to many vehicles which are either not in the relevant vicinity or not likely to be affected by the situation, thus further contributing to the tendency to ignore such warnings. Others are limited to vehicle-to-vehicle communications.
Another area only recently gaining in popularity is geographically-specific in-home/business emergency alerts. The technology known as Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME) is now being used by the National Weather Service (NWS) whereby a blanket broadcast is made with each alert containing a particular encoding. The consumer selects the code for his or her particular area and only those NWS notices corresponding to the code are output. However, these specific notices are only output by a NOAA Weather Radio (NWR) into which the user must actively enter the proper code. Further, the particular geographical area, while less than the entire broadcast radius, is still very large. Thus the system is not user-friendly and still leads to overwarning.
The Emergency Alert System (EAS), an automatic, digital-technology upgrade to the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS), is designed to warn the public of a variety of safety related issues—primarily those which pose an imminent threat to life or property. While the original EBS was never used for an actual national emergency it was used thousands of times to warn of local, natural or manmade threats. The EAS digital signal is the same signal that the NWS uses for the previously discussed NWR. The NWS as well as the Federal Emergency Management Administration and others utilize the system. Under the system, states are divided into one or more Local Areas which are typically comprised of one or two counties. The warnings are distributed to the nation's television and radio broadcast stations and other communications resources, which in turn forward the warnings to the general public via their broadcasting capabilities. As such the geographical area warned can be very large and therefore is inherently imprecise. Furthermore, radios (other than the NWR) or televisions have to be activated for the public to receive the warning. These factors, again, lead to overwarning of those not affected while potentially large portions of the public receive no warning at all.
Law enforcement officials and traffic management personnel constantly struggle with the problems of communicating warnings and advisories to motorists. Permanent and temporary road hazards, problematic intersections, roadway construction and maintenance work zones, traffic situations, uncontrolled railroad crossings, and the newly initiated Amber Alerts are some of the situations where timely and precise warnings to motorists can save time, property and lives. Despite the best efforts of those officials and agencies involved all of the methodology in place today is, to some degree, unsatisfactory, ineffective or inefficient.
Accordingly, a need exists for an active warning system that delivers pertinent, situationally appropriate information, and possibly intervention to those, and preferably only those, likely to be affected by the emergency situation.
What is also needed is a system that enables efficient and effective communication abilities from authorities to any portion of the public, down to an individual vehicle or building.
What is further needed is a system that can in effect predict which vehicles or buildings should receive information based on factors such as velocity (speed) and heading of the target receiver and/or emergency vehicle, etc.
Ideally, what is needed is one standardized system and method to meet all of these needs.